A KENTISH PARISH 69, 



ing, nobody can have been entitled to settle there in 

 permanent habitation. But as matter of fact, around 

 its somewhat indefinite boundaries there are a variety 

 of singularly picturesque cottages, which must date 

 from a tolerably remote antiquity, notwithstanding 

 their rude and slight materials. The inmates have 

 comparatively easy times of it. They have their little 

 gardens and their beehives, and the bees that are 

 swarming among the foxgloves and heather bloom 

 make honey as fragrant as any from Hymettus. They 

 have the pigs they either feed on the refuse of their 

 vegetables or turn out to grub and forage for them- 

 selves should there be breaks in the fences of the 

 adjoining beech-woods ; and they may keep half a 

 dozen of sheep or a cow, which take the free run of 

 the common. They have their tiny orchards of apple 

 and plum trees that seem to have run half wild, though 

 they bear heavy crops all the same ; and these spots 

 that culture has reclaimed and embellished make a 

 pretty contrast to the savage surroundings. 



Then in the middle of the chart there stands the 

 weather-beaten windmill with its skeleton arms or great 

 brown sails a conspicuous object from half a score of 

 the surrounding parishes ; and the miller's view must 

 be almost worth his rent if he chance to be an amateur 

 of the beauties of nature. Far away to the south 

 stretches the rolling expanse of the weald, till the eye, 

 as it travels in sky and space over the slopes swelling 

 against the horizon opposite, catches the faint outline of 

 the southernmost downs. And wherever the eye can 



